Rep. Diane Black faces challenge over key spending vote

Rep. Diane Black last year got quite the lesson in congressional sausage-making — make that lawmaking.

The Gallatin resident, now running for a third term in the 6th Congressional District and facing school administrator Jerry Lowery of Sparta in the Aug. 7 Republican primary, found herself voting against a bill that bore her own name.

It happened during the government shutdown of October 2013, which congressional experts saw as government dysfunction at its finest. It threatened to undercut the identity she has carved out for herself in Congress as an unwavering conservative — the identity she hopes will carry her to re-election in her staunchly conservative district.

Black was listed as the lead sponsor of HR 2775, which passed 285-144 on Oct. 16, after earlier clearing the Senate. The bill brought the government back to life after a two-week impasse, providing a temporary agreement on federal spending and raising the ceiling on the national debt.

While future historians will see Black's name on it, the 63-year-old nurse-lawmaker wishes it had come off. She voted "no."

"It was a blank check to raise the debt ceiling without getting anything in return," Black said in an interview, touting a conservative theme she has consistently espoused while in Congress.

So how did Black's name get on it? Congressional leaders had taken a bill of hers from earlier in the year that called for verifying the income of those seeking health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

They stripped out that language and substituted a "continuing appropriation" to keep the government functioning into January and extending its borrowing authority into February. Despite the bill becoming something wholly different, Black's name stayed on it.

Two months after the shutdown, Black, a member of the House Budget Committee, faced another contentious spending deal. This time she voted yes after helping negotiate it as part of a specially appointed House-Senate panel.

The budget agreement proposed to reduce government deficits by $85 billion over 10 years. But in the short term, it increased spending by $63 billion. Overall, Black says the most significant spending reductions since the Korean War occurred in her first two House terms.

Still, the December 2013 bill was a tough swallow for tea party Republicans back in Tennessee. They called it a cave-in to Obama and the Democrats and criticized Black and other House Republicans from Tennessee who voted for the measure.

"While far from perfect, this agreement represents a modest step in the right direction," she said in defending it at the time.

For Black and other tea party-affiliated members who arrived in January 2011 claiming a mandate to slash spending, the past 3 1/2 years have been about doing what they could on the issue, not all that they would have wanted.

At a minimum, she said, "We've helped people understand that the driver of our debt is mandatory spending."

Her budget work has given her a high profile for just a two-term member. Black, like Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Brentwood, frequently appears on cable news and political shows. Also like Blackburn, she prefers the title "congressman" to "congresswoman."

Adding to the profile has been her seat on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. It has involved her in proposals to overhaul the income tax and given her a perch from which to grill Internal Revenue Service officials about charges they improperly targeted the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.

Meanwhile, she has continued to speak out for tighter controls on immigration and restrictions on abortion.